


En Avant (March On, Do Not Tarry!)

by bessemerprocess



Category: Glee
Genre: Accapella Group, All Music Group Names Are Actually Bad Puns, Channukah, Christmas, Eating Disorder, Family, Gen, Growing Up, Injury, Jesse St. James learned to dance in pointe shoes, Jossed, Mos Def/REM Mash Ups, Physical Disability, Physical Therapy, Recovery, Season/Series 01-02 Hiatus, Singing, Suicidal Thoughts, Therapy, chosen family, mobility impairment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-14
Updated: 2011-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-14 18:28:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Jesse St. James tears his Achilles tendon the second week of his freshman year at UCLA.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	En Avant (March On, Do Not Tarry!)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amadi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amadi/gifts).



> Happy (belated) More Joy Day, Amadi!
> 
> This fic was beta'd by several awesome people at several stages of it's development: aliya, amadi, and wishfulclicking, thank you!

Jesse St. James tears his Achilles tendon the second week of his freshman year at UCLA. The first surgery goes badly, there is serious nerve damage. He gets second opinions and third opinions and tenth opinions, but the doctors all say the same thing: he'll never dance again. It's possible he'll always walk with a limp, possibly a cane, even after surgery.

After the tenth doctor, he hobbles home to his tiny campus apartment. He'd believed this would just be a minor obstacle, just another thing Jesse St. James would surmount. But he's just Jesse now, and none of his dreams are going to come true.

He spends a week lining up pill bottles and pouring glasses of the expensive scotch that Corcoran had given to him for a graduation present. The tag around the neck says it's for his debut on Broadway, but he'll never go to Broadway now, and Jesse wonders if it'd be better if he just drank it all now, washed down every single pill in those bottles and said goodbye to his dream.

He doesn't. Not because he doesn't want to, but because Corcoran shows up, baby Beth on one hip and says, "Come home, Jesse."

"Why?" he asks.

"Because, I'll always be on your team, kid," she says and holds out her hand.

He takes it.

***

Ohio is grayer than he remembers it. Jesse spends entire days watching rain drops hit the window pane of his new room. He hasn't told his parents yet: they're off in Europe somewhere and he's not even sure they remember he exists. Besides, his father will only be overjoyed. He'll push brochures for pre-law programs and say how glad he is now that Jesse won't be wasting his life. In his father's house, singing and dancing weren't things a man did, even if he did them well.

In Shelby's house--Jesse, she says to him on the plane, I'm not your teacher anymore, call me Shelby--he might not be able to dance, but he can still sing. He sings to Beth when she fusses and he sings show tune with Shelby as they do the dishes and he sings to himself while he's doing physical therapy. If he stops singing, he'll be back in that apartment in Los Angeles staring at that line of pill bottles again.

Jesse is on crutches and it's his right leg, so he can't drive, which probably keeps him out of a lot of trouble. At least as far as one Rachel Berry is concerned. The last time he touched her it was to break an egg over her face. The last time he looked into her eyes, it was the moment before his greatest--his last--victory was announced. He's hurt her a million times, he has no right to ask her to take him back. Worse yet, a broken him. Rachel Berry deserves a man who can match her every step.

Still, when Shelby drives by Rachel's neighborhood, he asks her if they can just drive by her house. "Please, Shelby," he says. "I just..." He has no justification, no right, but he still wants her.

Shelby looks at him for a long moment. "Okay, but just a drive by. No stopping, no slowing down. Neither of us should be there."

He nods and doesn't even bother slipping on his show face when he smiles. "Thank you."

The lights are on at Rachel's house, she and her dads are in the living room, dancing and singing, like they live in a musical. Jesse's heart can't take it: he looks away. Shelby keeps driving.

It's silent in the car for a long moment: just the noise from the engine and Beth's babbling. Jesse thinks Shelby must want to say something, but he can't hear it right now, so he sings. Jesse's not sure why he picks _Alameda_. Maybe it's just because Elliot Smith has been on high rotation on his iPod, maybe it's because it's become his song. Either way, he's never sung it in front of Shelby before. He doesn't look at her until he sings _Nobody broke your heart, You broke your own 'cause you can't finish what you start_ , and when he does, he has to look away again. Shelby's face is full of her own pain. He keeps singing because he doesn't know how to stop.

***

The first time Jesse St. James met Shelby Corcoran he was ten years old. She'd come to his dance company's recital, scouting some of the older kids for Vocal Adrenaline. He remembers being intimidated by her until she smiled at him.

"You're doing a good job, kid," she'd said. "Keep it up and there'll be a spot for you on my team when you get older."

Every time he turned around after that, Shelby was watching. Waiting to make him into a star. She's seen him preform more times than either of his parents.

When Shelby says things like _hold on_ and _this is not the end_ and _damnit, Jesse, if you kill yourself in my house, I'll make sure they play Bob Dylan at your funeral_ Jesse believes her. She's pushed him, she's worked him until he'd wanted to pass out, she's mocked him when he'd failed, but she has never, ever lied to him. If he's going to trust anyone, it's going to be Shelby.

***

The second surgery is more successful than the first. Jesse comes home from Cleveland in a walking cast. He can't put any weight on the foot, so he's still got the crutches, but the doctors are happy with the way everything is healing. If he can keep up with the physical therapy, he might walk unaided in a year. He won't dance, though, there is nothing they can do for the nerves and so he'll never regain the feeling in his toes.

Jesse scoffs at the idea that he might not work hard enough. He spent his whole life working, up until that sickening pop ended all his plans. If anyone can work hard enough it'll be him. The doctors try and tell him hard work isn't everything, that there are things even he can't fix, but Jesse is singing the Hallelujah Chorus in his head and he doesn't hear them.

Physical therapy is harder than any six hour Vocal Adrenaline practice ever was. In Show Choir, there is always--if you are Jesse St. James--a moment where you get everything right. There had been pain, of course. Getting what you want always hurts, but it was pain that Jesse understood. In physical therapy the rewards don't seem like rewards at all, and the pain is foreign to him. The day he points his toes for the first time, his therapist smiles at him like he's won Nationals.

Shelby drops him off at home, and for the first time since his second surgery, Jesse thinks about killing himself.

In his old life, pointing his toes was nothing. In his old life, Jesse St. James jumped and spun and perfectly controlled every single movement of his body. In his old life his body, his life, the entire world were all his. Now he needs Shelby's help getting into and out of the shower.

When he was twelve, all the girls in his ballet class had gotten pointe shoes and Jesse hadn't. Back then, there was no challenge too great for Jesse St. James, so he'd blackmailed his very best rival, Mary Cate Tatum, into teaching him. He'd turned his toes bloody, but he could dance Mary Cate's part in Swan Lake by the time they were done. He'd never said thank you to her.

His pointe shoes are in a box in Shelby's basement. He'd kept it up until the end, because it was just one more thing that Jesse St. James could do that mere mortals couldn't.

That's where Shelby finds him: in the basement, drunk, surrounded by shards of his glass and his now ruined pointe shoes. He's holding a shard, looking idly through it at the light. He's still considering slashing his wrists when she takes the piece of glass out of his hands.

"It would've been just one more scar," he says bitterly.

***

In the morning he finds he has another new therapist, this one for his head. Shelby stays home from work, checking in on him every fifteen minutes. Jesse is hung over and sullen. He shouldn't be hung over. He's been more drunk than this on numerous occasions, but mixing alcohol with muscle relaxants and pain killers hadn't been one of his better decisions.

He's on the couch, leg propped up, head pounding when Beth starts crying. Shelby is on the phone, arguing with the insurance company, probably, and trying to shush her at the same time.

"Give her here," he says.

Shelby hesitates before handing him Beth, and for a second it hurts more than his leg, more than the loss of his dreams, more than anything ever has.

Jesse wants to say I'll never hurt her, I'll never leave her. He wants to say something fierce and something true, but he doesn't have the words. Instead, he bounces Beth up and down until she's smiling again and sings her _Who Loves You_ while she tries to grab at his hair.

He goes to the therapist without complaint.

***

The anti-depressants make him puke for three straight days.

In between puking his guts up and huddling miserably on Shelby's couch, Jesse asks, "Why don't you send me home?"

Shelby smiles and hands him a glass of water. "I've met your parents, remember?"

Jesse's parents still think he's in LA, they still think he has dreams, that he has a future. "True. Still, you don't have to do all this. You have an actual kid to take care of now," he says. Last year, he would have thought it was because he was her star and she was invested in him. He doesn't know why Shelby is taking care of him now, when there isn't anything in it for her.

"I meant it when I said I'll always be on your team. You may not be my kid, but you'll always be one of mine."

Further conversation is cut short as he hops his way back to the bathroom to hurl again.

***

Shelby's collection of Broadway musicals is only rivaled by Rachel's in Jesse's experience. Which is good, because while Beth likes Sondheim as much as Jesse does, he likes variety, too.

He spends a lot of time with Beth, since they are similarly mobile and he's still not cleared to drive. Some free babysitting is the least he can do for Shelby, and a love of musical theater should be encouraged at a young age.

All Beth really wants in life is for someone to pay attention to pay attention to her and dangle sparkly thing in front of her face.

Jesse wonder if maybe that's all he really needs, too.

***

Between his physical therapist, Andra and his therapist-therapist, Shannon, Jesse sometimes feels like he's being rushed by an Army of tiny women hell bent on giving him tools to help himself. Both are under 5'4", both are fierce, and both, he thinks, are overly invested in seeing him put his life back together. Jesse has lived his entire life with performers, so he knows fierce at least.

Andra is easier to deal with. She lets him get away with slipping on his show face when things hurt, as long as he keeps doing the work. She lets him pretend when he needs to. Shannon doesn't let him pretend about anything.

He tells her things even Shelby doesn't know, and Shelby knows all his little secrets. Shelby knows about the time when he was thirteen and he kissed Robin Archer and she kicked him in the nuts, she knows about the week he stopped eating because he thought it'd make Mary Cate start eating, she knows that he slept with three of her freshmen after Nationals even though she explicitly told him not to. Shelby has always been the person he's told things to.

He learns things from Shannon, too. How to redirect his thoughts when he gets caught in a morass of self-hate thinking about the Tony that will never be his, how to breath through the panic when he wakes up in the morning and realizes this isn't all a terrible dream, how to not use sarcasm as his first line of defense.

***

"We're going to eat real food, kid," Shelby says.

"Can you cook?" Jesse replies, dubiously.

"Can you?"

"No, my culinary talents lie in moving salad from the bag to my plate. We can't even rely on my drive through talents anymore," Jesse says with a grin.

"Exactly. So we're going to learn to cook," Shelby announces.

"We?"

"We."

Shelby pulls a cookbook out of a Barnes and Nobles bag. "There are directions. I mean, how hard can it be?"

Jesse groans.

It turns out cooking isn't as hard as it looks. A week into the grand experiment they are managing finished products that actually look like food, even if they don't always taste like food.

***

The thing about drugs is that they don't magically fix everything. Jesse really, really wishes that they did. His leg is spasming, Beth is colicky, Shelby is sleep deprived and he's just sad.

It doesn't help that there is some problem with his insurance and they've called twice already. If they don't figure out how to fix it, Jesse's going to have to break down and call his dad. He really doesn't want to call his dad.

Jesse needs out of the house, so he grabs his cell and goes. It's hard to storm out on crutches, but he does his level best.

He doesn't go far: just down to the tiny park the marks the entrance to Shelby's relentlessly suburban neighborhood. Gravel is a bitch on crutches, but he manages, and situates himself on a swing.

Jesse sits there, staring at the sky, and breaths until it all hurts a little less.

***

He does his physical therapy out past McKinley, so every time they drive by, Jesse keeps an eye out for anyone he knows.

He's seen Mr. Schuester in the parking lot a couple of times and Jesse wonders if he's still mad at him, or if he even thinks about him at all.

Jesse hasn't seen Rachel at all, but he keeps looking.

***

Jesse's gotten to the point where he's walking with a cane. He still has bad days, but there are more good days even as the weather outside grows colder.

Shelby comes home with an arm load of bags. It's only November, so Jesse smiles. "Early Christmas shopping?" he asks.

"Channukah is in a week," she replies.

"Oh, sorry, I mean..." he says stumbling over his words. He knew in some vague way that Shelby was Jewish, he'd just never really considered it. "So late Channukah shopping?" he asks with a repentant shrug.

Shelby sighs. "I though she should have holidays, even if I haven't celebrated in years. There were always December Invitationals."

"The snowman costumes my sophomore year," Jesse says, and they both break into giggles. Those had been the worst. They were ridiculous to dance in, and worse, fell apart at inopportune moments. Kara Williams had flashed the entire audience when her costume went to pieces in the forth number and it had taken blackmail to get her back on stage for the final piece.

"So Channukah," Jesse says. "You're going to have walk me through this one."

***

Jesse has talked Shelby into a mall trip. He hates the mall these days. There's always the chance of running into one of his former team mates and there is only so much walking he can take, but Jesse needs Channukah gifts for Shelby and Beth, so he's willing to face the crowds this once.

Beth is in a sling, tucked up against Shelby when they run into Quinn Fabray coming out of Macy's.

"Ms. Corcoran," Quinn stammers staring at Beth. Jesse wonders if this is the first time she's seen the baby since the hospital, because she hasn't noticed him--cane and all--standing right there.

"Quinn," Shelby says, and smiles. "Would you like to sit down and hold her for a minute?"

Shelby, Jesse knows, had relentlessly pursued an open adoption, but Quinn hasn't been by the house in all the time Jesse has been there. There is a picture of Quinn in Beth's room, though, one that Jesse had taken back when he'd been at McKinley.

Jesse can't help but be happy about the words sit down, even if Quinn looks like she doesn't know how to answer the question. "Come on," he says to her with a nod to Shelby. "Beth will like the distraction."

Quinn nods slowly, like she's seeing him for the first time. "Okay."

They sit on the bench and Shelby hands Beth to Quinn. Beth is immediately enraptured with Quinn's hair, grabbing with her tiny fists.

Shelby leaves the two of them there.

"What happened?" Quinn asks, gesturing to his leg.

Jesse wants to lie. He wants to play it down. He wants to not talk about it at all. "Ruptured my Achilles tendon," he says instead. His therapist would be proud.

All Quinn says is, "Oh," and goes back to staring at the little girl in her arms.

"How is Rachel?" he asks trying to sound like he doesn't actually care. He's probably failing.

"Obsessed about the Invitational. Mike convinced her and Mr. Shuester that the whole thing should be a REM/Mos Def mashup," Quinn says, letting Beth bounce up and down on her leg. "Rachel can't rap. At all."

The image is perfect. Jesse throw his head back and laughs. It feels good.

***

Shelby lights the candles and Jesse tries to look like he knows what he's doing. Holidays at the St. James' had always been performance events. Perfect son in the perfect suit singing the perfect carols for the perfect guests. There had been a perfect tree, done up in ornaments and ribbons by a decorator, and presents all wrapped with perfect bows thanks to the professional department store wrappers.

Channukah with Shelby is different. The menorah is new, but that's because Shelby doesn't speak to her parents any more than Jesse does to his. They'd ended up ordering a simple silver one off the internet, with candles and table linens to match.

"No fire for you, kiddo," Jesse says as Beth reaches for the flame. She's at that stage where she wants to have everything, on fire or not. Shelby smiles at them, and even if Jesse doesn't understand the Hebrew, he knows the words mean family.

***

Shannon always has something for him to do with his hands. Legos, or a koosh ball, just something to fiddle with, to look at when he can't look at her.

"On stage, it's like the entire world is watching you and you are flying," he says. "And I, I was amazing at it. I knew I was a star and so did everyone else. And now I'm just this guy who people stare at in the grocery store, or worse, they don't even look at me, just the cane. Like the cane is the only thing I am," Jesse says.

***

His father calls him to see if he's coming home from UCLA for Christmas and Jesse breaks down.

Jesse hasn't cried in front of Shelby, not like this, since he was in ninth grade and Mitchell Clark called him a faggot and then punched him in the face. Sure he'd cried when his body was just so exhausted it couldn't move anymore. Sure he'd cried tears of joy that first Nationals. But he hasn't broken down and sobbed on her shoulder since he was a boy.

It doesn't matter, Shelby just holds him and lets him cry.

Later, he eavesdrops on Shelby as she yells at his father over the phone.

***

"You can still sing, you know," Shelby says one evening as they are doing the dinner dishes.

He breaks into a few lines of _La Vie Boheme_ and Shelby swats him with her dish towel.

"I meant, you could go to college and sing. Ohio State Lima has a choir."

"It's not the same," Jesse says.

"Just think about it."

***

On Christmas Day, Shelby makes him pancakes. She's made him pancakes before, back when he was her star and they'd had Friday night practice that ran into the morning. He'd sat at this table with a few of his select team mates and basked in the glow of Shelby's approval. Today it's just him and Beth.

The doorbell rings, and Shelby is attempting to turn pancake batter into brontosauruses, so Jesse gets up.

Quinn Fabray is at the door, looking like she's considering turning tail and running.

"Come in," Jesse says.

"No, it's okay. I just wanted to drop this off," Quinn says and hands him a box wrapped in pink paper. "Ms. Corcoran said it would be okay if I got something for Beth," she explains. "I'll just be going."

"Are you sure? I think she'd like to see you."

"No, I... Merry Christmas, Jesse."

"Merry Christmas, Quinn," he says as she runs back to the car where her mother is waiting.

"Who was that?" Shelby asks when he comes back into the kitchen.

"Quinn. She wouldn't stay, she just wanted Beth to have this," Jesse says and hands over the package.

Shelby slips a finger under the tape and carefully unwraps the package. Inside is a music box. A little ballerina twirls on her pointe shoe as _The Rainbow Connection_ plays on.

***

"Okay," Jesse says and hands Shelby the course catalog.

Shelby seems to know the entire administration of Ohio State Lima and they get Jesse admitted and registered in no time at all.

He doesn't let her sign him up for choir.

***

They leave Beth with a babysitter and go to the McKinley Invitational. Jesse leaves his cane in the car. Shelby gives him a look but doesn't say anything.

They buy tickets and are seated without any fuss. Jesse is a little put off that no one recognizes them, but is relieved as well.

The lights go down and the curtain goes up and Jesse feels that familiar surge of adrenaline that says: this is the competition, this is the enemy. He's never going to have competition again, so Jesse pushes down the part of him that wants to critique, wants to pick the show to pieces and just sits back and tries to enjoy the performance.

Rachel's voice is perfect as ever. _Shiny happy people laughing_ fills the air and Jesse is whisked back to the day in the music shop where she sat beside him and they had sung together for the first time. He wished he was singing with her now. Together, they could've brought Broadway to its knees.

Jesse almost laughs when Puck starts rapping. He recognizes the song: Mos Def's _Sun, Moon, Stars_. These are not two songs Jesse would've ever thought to mash together, but New Directions makes it work.

They end on a mashup of _Bad Day_ and _Priority_ \-- _count your blessings, peace before everything_ \--that brings the crowd to it's feet. Shelby just squeezes his hand while he breathes through the pain.

***

After the show, Jesse lingers. Mostly because his leg aches and its easier to let the crowd clear, but also because he's hoping to run into Rachel in the parking lot. When he finally stands it is with a sharp pain, and he has to grab Shelby's hand to steady himself.

By the time they make it to the parking lot, his ankle is on fire and Jesse is silently cursing himself.

That, of course, is when he sees her. She's with her dads and Finn has his arm wrapped possessively around her waist. Rachel smile is brighter than even Carmel's spotlight, and he stops for just a moment, leaning against Shelby's car, to look at her.

She looks at him, and then does a double take. "Jesse?" she calls.

He gets into the car without saying anything.

***

Jesse does what he always does when he's mad at himself, he pushes harder. He pushes and he sings. _One song, he had the world at his feet, glory_.

"Stop," Andra finally tells him. "Jesse, stop." He doesn't, not until she grabs him by the shoulders and makes him.

He sits there, Andra's hands still on his shoulders, and pants. He's out of breath from what should be the simplest of tasks. Once he can breath evenly again, Andra sends him to the locker room. "That's good for today, Jesse," she says too kindly.

He punches the cinder block wall outside the locker room, and then stands back, cursing and staring at his blood knuckles.

Andra comes and leads him to a chair. "Jesse..." she starts, but must think better of it, because she silently wraps his hand. "It does get better," she promises. He doesn't believe her.

***

Ohio State Lima is nothing like UCLA. He's taking core classes: English, math, that sort of thing. None of it is particularly strenuous. Jesse hasn't declared a major. It still hurts a little to think about the future.

Rachel is sitting on a retaining wall, ankles crossed when Jesse gets out of English 104.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey," he replies, and sits down beside her. "How did you find me?"

"Artie and Puck did some detective work for me," Rachel says. "After Invitationals, I needed to make sure I hadn't hallucinated you or anything. Quinn knew that you were in town, but you didn't tell me?"

"I didn't think you'd want to know," he says, not quite looking at her.

"I was mad for a long time. I'm not mad any more. I still care about you and wish you'd told me you'd been hurt," Rachel says. "I just moved on."

"I moved on, too," he says and walks away. She doesn't follow.

***

Jesse sees the poster in the stair well of the union. All three of the campus' acapella groups are looking for new members. He tells himself he's not interested for a week before signing his name to the audition list.

***

Jesse loves everything about Lime-Aid except the name. Music groups always love puns, but they always seemed a bit trite to him. Still, Lime-Aid is one of best co-ed acapella groups in Ohio, and singing with them gives Jesse much of the same joy he felt singing with Vocal Adrenaline

He's not the lead--not yet--but that's because the others have actual talent. Jesse is just going to have to work his way to the top. He's looking forward to the challenge.

Their first performance is scheduled for February.

"There are just a few simple steps for the first song. Step, step, twirl, step," the director says as he demonstrates. The stepping isn't going to be a problem, but Jesse's not sure he can pull off the twirl. He's right, he does the steps with the group, but the twirl is a disaster.

"Don't worry," the director says to him. "We can teach you to dance."

He wants to scream, "Don't you know who I am? I'm Jesse fucking St. James!" but he's doesn't. He just nods silently.

***

"Your father is here," Shelby says before he can step foot through the door.

Simon St. James is a tall imposing man in an Italian suit. He looks completely out of place sitting at Shelby's dining room table.

"Why are you here?" Jesse asks.

"You wouldn't answer any of our calls. Your mother was worried," his father says, staring at the cane in Jesse's hand.

"I'm fine," he says, automatically. There's never been room for anything else with his father.

"You don't look fine," his father says, eyes still on the cane.

"The doctors say I'm actually healing ahead of schedule," Jesse replies, wondering if there is some way to salvage this conversation.

"Come home," his father says. "We'll work things out. Get you into a real school. David has some pull at Harvard. You don't have to throw away your life in Lima."

"I am home. And I'm happy here. You're the one who would be happy at Harvard," says Jesse. He doesn't say things like that to his father, not ever, but somehow it feels like he can breath again.

"Your mother..." his father starts, as he edges toward Jesse and the door

"Tell her I'm doing fine. My acapella group is preforming in two weeks. If she wants, I'll send tickets, and she can see for herself," Jesse says, and opens the door ushering his father back out of his life.

***

Singing on stage in front of an engaged audience is the best high Jesse can imagine. He'd thought he'd lost this feeling, he'd thought his life was over. He's on stage again, now, and his voice is soaring and his adrenaline is pumping and at the end the audience rises to its feet and claps. Something that has been broken inside of him for a long time starts to mend and Jesse can't help but smile.

***

Afterwords, Shelby meets him backstage. She's not alone. Quinn and Rachel trail behind her, looking a bit uncertain.

"Shelby invited us," Quinn explains. "You were amazing up there."

"A flawless performance," Rachel says, and goes up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.

"Thank you," he says. He hasn't been able to stop smiling since the end of the first set--though they'd had to change up the choreography so he hadn't had to twirl--when he'd seen Shelby clapping. He'd looked to see if his parents had decided to accept his offer, but he hadn't really expected them to show, and so he doesn't let their absence effect him.

It's okay though. Back stage, with Quinn and Rachel watching, Shelby wraps him in a hug and whispers fiercely in his ear, "I am so proud of you Jesse St. James," and that's all he really wanted to hear.


End file.
